


Five Conversations with a Drunk Hemingway

by tuesday



Category: Jazz Age Writer RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anachronistic, Background Alice B. Toklas/Gertrude Stein, Background F. Scott Fitzgerald/Zelda Fitzgerald, F/M, Functional Alcholics, M/M, Multi, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: Plus one party of 20s expats in Paris.  In which Hemingway writes his slam book early, events happen all out of order, and all his friends are done with his shit.





	Five Conversations with a Drunk Hemingway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefourthvine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefourthvine/gifts).



> This is a treat, and thus I've decided I can play fast and loose with canon, where I do not ignore it entirely. Yes, this is RPF, but it's leaning really heavy on the F, like one of those horror movies "based on real events" where you can go, "Well. There was _a_ house, even if it wasn't a haunted murder castle." Half because I do not have time to dig out a bunch of my old books, half because I don't want to get bogged down with a bunch of fact-checking and historical accuracy, and half because it's more fun (and much less depressing) this way. Yes, that's more than one. This is that kind of story. 
> 
> Thank you so much framlingem for the beta! Any and all remaining mistakes are all on me.
> 
> Thank you for the excuse to write some Hemingway fic, TFV! :D

1.

"Darling," Josephine said. "You can't say you weren't expecting this."

"It was private."

"She thought it was your manuscript."

"It was not," Hemingway grated out.

"Obviously."

"So why are you still talking to me?"

"You didn't include me."

"So you're not angry?"

"Oh, no." Josephine put her glass on the bar. "I'm furious. You included Pound, and you couldn't spare a sentence or three for me?"

"It was a list of grievances. You're far too good for me to have any."

"Nice try." Josephine's lips twitched. Then, "At least you weren't subjected to his attempts at vocal accompaniment."

"Someone needs to burn those bongos," Hemingway said.

Privately, Josephine agreed.

2.

Gertrude was entirely unimpressed. She loved Hemingway, but she was done with hand-holding him through his mistakes. "You made it sound like we're deviants." She knew that look. "You're no stranger to a little light-hearted theatre. I know for a fact that some of those dresses in your wardrobe do not belong to your lady friends, and I helped you pick out that rouge."

"I never claimed I wasn't a deviant myself." Hemingway's grin was somewhere between roguish and soused. "I may be an arse, but I'm no liar."

Gertrude had two words in reply to that: "Meat thermometer."

"No one was supposed to read it!"

Gertrude took away the decanter, because she was not putting up with this and letting Hemingway drink all her brandy. She pointed a finger at him. "You hurt Alice's feelings. Apologize. Until then, out."

"But—"

" _Out_."

Hemingway went.

3.

"You're talking to me?" Hemingway asked.

Really, Zelda thought, he needn't look so surprised. "I know a thing or two about having someone taking your private thoughts and making them public." She gestured the bartender to pour Hemingway another. "Though I know for a fact it's not all true."

"You've talked to Gertrude, then?"

Zelda snorted. "I've seen my husband's dick." She held her fingers not very far apart at all. "You don't think you exaggerated a little?" She put special emphasis on "little." She was rewarded with Hemingway laughing into his drink. "Anyway, Fitz is writing you into his latest book. Pretty sure he's planning to kill you off. Or make you disappear. Or both."

Hemingway smiled fondly. "Of course he is."

Much later, Zelda told him, "When you do publish your diary, be sure to include the correction about his size."

Hemingway had their mutual scribbles on a pile of napkins in his pocket. Zelda was half-certain he'd lose them before he made it halfway home. He asked, "And I have your permission?"

"For any or all of it," Zelda confirmed, swaying a little on her feet herself. "But be sure to mention no matter the size, if history's any guide, he'll have no luck with pleasuring a woman." Hemingway helped prop her up until a cab came by. "Now, a man, on the other hand—you'll have to let me know how that goes."

The noise Hemingway made was hilarious and awful. "We are never publishing this."

"You're never publishing this," Zelda agreed. "I think I have more material for my novel."

4.

"You! I can't believe you!" Pound pointed accusingly at the object of his ire and reason for his distress.

Hemingway looked resigned at first, but did a double-take upon recognizing Pound. "What? Why are you mad at me? I said nice things about you!"

Pound threw himself into the stool beside Hemingway. "You convinced Josie to torch my bongos."

Hemingway's expression was one of pity. "No one wanted to tell you, but your playing is what did that."

"She said she decided after she'd talked with you."

"Pretty sure she decided the first time she heard you play."

"She said _you_ said someone should burn them."

Hemingway looked like he was thinking it over. "That sounds like me."

"Ha!"

"But it also sounds like anyone else who's heard you." Pound glowered. He suspected that this was why no one except Josephine was talking to him anymore—because Hemingway was an unrepentant asshole. "Here, let me get you a drink."

Pound sighed. He accepted the drink. He thought back to the beginning of their conversation. " … What did you mean by, 'I said nice things about you'?"

5.

"Why," Fitzgerald wanted to know, "is Zelda constantly asking if we've talked, when she knows I'm not speaking to you right now?"

"You're speaking to me this very moment," Hemingway said, because he thought he was funny.

"What. Do. You. Want." Fitzgerald enunciated carefully. It was difficult, sometimes, to tell how much Hemingway had had to drink. The empty bottles littering the flat could be an indication of a typical Hemingway binge, but they could also be a mark of his housekeeping skills. Fitzgerald would rather not have this conversation twice. He didn't particularly wish to have it this once.

"Hey, hey, do you remember," and this tipped the scales such that Fitzgerald was reasonably certain Hemingway was drunk off his ass, "when we went on that road trip?"

"I am never traveling with you again," Fitzgerald said automatically.

"You got that fever. We went to the art gallery."

"And you're mixing up your stories." Fitzgerald sighed. It was hard to stay angry when Hemingway looked this pathetic. "Come on. Let's get you to bed."

"Yes!" Hemingway was ebullient. "That's what I was talking about."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Fitzgerald muttered, but it was mostly to himself.

"Zelda said—she said—" Hemingway looked confused. Fitzgerald resigned himself to spending the night and making sure Hemingway didn't drown in his own vomit. "What was I saying?"

"Bed. Now." Hemingway was not doing very much to help in the endeavor, Fitzgerald bearing most of their weight.

"What a good idea. Sometimes you have good ideas." Hemingway sounded gratingly surprised. Fitzgerald dropped him on the mattress. "Where are you going?"

"There are limits." Fitzgerald had passed his ages ago. Hemingway's couch was, as expected, disgusting. Fitzgerald temporarily retreated to steal all of the blankets.

"Will you still be here in the morning?" Hemingway looked oddly vulnerable on the bare bed.

Fitzgerald heaved another sigh. "Go to sleep."

They both did.

+1

Hemingway had learned his lesson. His private works he kept sealed in a locked trunk. This was not his fault, and he was concerned no one would believe him.

"Of course it's not you," Josephine said in a scathing, dismissive tone. "You wouldn't have changed the names."

"And you'd never publish under a pseudonym," Gertrude added.

Zelda smirked into her drink.

"It only reads a little like you," Pound consoled him.

Fitzgerald was staring at Zelda, aghast. "When did you two become friends?" To Hemingway, "Why would you share pillow talk with my wife?"

"You didn't," Hemingway said as he, too, stared at Zelda. She preened a little. "You did." Hemingway tipped his glass in her direction, a toast and a salute. "Well done."

"You shouldn't encourage her." 

"Someone has to." Hemingway suspected Gertrude would soon be taking someone new under her wing. He'd need to remind Zelda to knock before entering any closed doors.

"We encourage each other," Hemingway interjected.

"We drink too much wine and overshare," Zelda translated.

Fitzgerald had his head buried in his hands. Alice had her feet in Gertrude's lap. Pound had acquired a new set of bongos at some point, and Josephine was staring at him with murder in her eyes. Zelda looked entirely too pleased with herself, as well she should. No one even blamed Hemingway for whatever small part he may have played in all this.

Life was good.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is mostly based on my recollections from my obsession with the 20s expats in Paris a decade ago, as well as my abiding love for Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. It's been a long time since I last read A Moveable Feast, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Tender is the Night, and so on and so forth. If you want to fact check how terribly, hilariously wrong most of this is, here's some of your work done for you:
> 
> 1\. A Moveable Feast was not published in Hemingway's lifetime. It reads like a slam book because it pretty much is. As far as I'm aware, none of his 20s friends and contemporaries read it in manuscript form or the collection of notes he cribbed from when writing/editing it.  
> 2\. Josephine Baker: If Hemingway wrote anything about her in A Moveable Feast, I either don't remember, or it was cut out in editing. Ezra Pound, on the other hand, got the best treatment of everyone included. The only complaint Hemingway had was his decision to learn to play the bongos. The band Better Than Ezra gets its name from this very tame slam.  
> 3\. Gertrude Stein was something of a mentor to Hemingway. He did write that he walked in as something horrifyingly scandalous occurred between her and Alice B. Toklas. Probably he was trying to intimate that they were kissing. In this fictional 'verse, I like to think he walked in on something a bit more exciting. Everyone knew they were lesbians, after all.  
> 4\. Hemingway got super interested in crossdressing, gender play, and polyamory later on in life, as evidenced by Garden of Eden (or maybe he was the whole time?). When it comes to Hemingway, I obviously do not care enough about separation of the text and the author.  
> 5\. The meat thermometer story is one of Hemingway's RPF tales that he probably thinks make him sound manly and Fitzgerald sound like a hapless, lovelorn fool whom Hemingway scorned constantly, but which really makes it sound like Hemingway ships it. Supposedly, Fitzgerald was sick and wanted Hemingway to take his temperature . . . with a meat thermometer. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We get it, Hemingway. You want Fitzgerald to want your meat thermometer.  
> 6\. Fitzgerald stole several of his best lines and plots from Zelda's diaries. My being #teamzelda is the number one reason I decided canon can go fuck itself. Eff off, actual events, no one likes you.  
> 7\. In Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald wrote in not one, but two Hemingway expies. One dies. The other disappears.  
> 8\. Insofar as I'm aware, Josephine did not set Ezra's bongos on fire in real life, but I want to believe.  
> 9\. I have no idea if some of these people were friends with one another, but see above: _I want to believe_.  
>  10\. Zelda only published under her own name as far as I know. Her novel that was thinly veiled prose about real relationships was about her and Fitzgerald, not Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Also, she and Hemingway were much less in the way of BFF drinking buddies and much more like mortal enemies irl, but real events have no power here. 
> 
> +1. In this 'verse, Hemingway reconciled with every one of his friends after feuding, Zelda was never institutionalized, and while Hemingway did eventually end up in the Keys to start a herd of polydactyl cats and brag about his adventures in Cuba, he was visited often by his noted very good friends, the Fitzgeralds.


End file.
